The names of several children of extraordinary mathematical powers have lately been introduced to the world. Thomas Safford, "the wonderful Vermont boy," has attained a world-wide celebrity; and we perceive that the West has recently claimed a youthful genius scarcely less remarkable. France has already boasted of two mathematical prodigies, but we venture to affirm that the case of young Grandemange is without a parallel. Physically as well as intellectually he is a wonder. The likeness we present was drawn from a daguerreotype.

This poor child is without arms or legs, and can be supported in an erect position only by a sort of box, as seen in the picture, in which he is compelled constantly to live. But this fragment of a human body, which in Sparta would have perished on the day of its birth, has received, in compensation for an infirmity so complete, a faculty of abstraction and calculation, of which it will be difficult to meet with a more extraordinary example. All the vital forces, deprived of the opportunity of expansion, seem to have sought refuge in the brain, and in the midst of misfortune there has resulted a most extraordinary development of mathematical powers.